


The Witch's Hair Shirt

by Zagzagael



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-15
Updated: 2011-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My first ever foray into fanfiction. This fic....opened doors I never even knew existed.</p><p>Severus Snape and an original female character.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“There is one more thing,” Headmaster Dumbledore drew a parchment from the pile of rolled missives on the table in front of him. Severus Snape inwardly groaned, yes this was the staff meeting from Hell. Surely Dante must have included staff meetings in one of his inner circles of damnation; he made a mental note to check his battered copy of 'The Inferno' later, after this suffering was done for the day. “Severus, please indulge an old man for another few moments.”

Snape felt the Headmaster’s criticism underlying the teasing tone of his words. He sat up straighter and feigned interest. Dumbledore nodded and looked down at the parchment.

“Our recent vacancy in the position of History of Magic has not gone unnoticed. We are being offered a temporary instructor, for the remainder of this school year.” Smiling down into his beard he said, “That should allow Professor Binns time to return from this rather surprising sabbatical.” He looked up at his staff, mouth set in a serious line. “This morning I received word from Hildegaard Von Franz” he paused to let Snape’s audible intake of breath resonate throughout the room “of the Norn Coven informing me that if we are so inclined, she would very much like to have us consider one of her own witches for the position.”

A collective gasp rose from the gathered instructors. Tea cups rattled in saucers and quills scratched notation upon parchment.

Minerva spoke first, “A Norn Witch is interested in teaching at Hogwarts?”

“That would appear to be the case,” Dumbledore affirmed.

The staff room came alive with a buzzing undercurrent of surprised whispers. Snape’s voice was not amongst those. He was reeling under the shock of the message, searching for the intent. The highest order of witches in the magical world had contacted Albus Dumbeldore, to offer one of their own to spend nearly three quarters of a school year with this student body. It was simply unfathomable to him.

It had been nine years since he had been in Hildegaard Von Franz’s presence, he was thirty years old now and his life at twenty-one seemed to have been lived by someone else; another someone who had had the experiences but left him to fathom out the meanings. He shuddered as the sickening and all too familiar stab of shame and regret cut to the bone. He tumbled into the nearly decade old memory from that fateful day; the ice-cold spray of the ocean air, the contrasting heat of the witches gathered around him, warmth denied to him because he held one of their own, dying, in his arms. Von Franz had spoken in riddles…

He rubbed absently at his chest and felt the…

“Professor!” hissed the librarian to his right. “Headmaster!” hissed the librarian to his left. He was flanked by both women.

He shook himself out of his reverie and looked up. “Apologies, Headmaster, sir,” he bowed his head, “My thoughts were elsewhere.”

“Apparently.” Dumbledore stared at him intently. “I was asking for any reservations that the staff may have regarding this placement. I assume you have none.”

“Of course I have none. I am just,” he hesitated, “extraordinarily,” hesitation still, “surprised, honored…a bit stunned…”

“’More things in heaven and earth, Horatio, ’” chuckled Filius Flitwick.

Snape turned on the little professor venomously, “Not in my heaven and earth, sir!” He saw too late that the man meant no harm and had been merely attempting to lighten Snape’s obviously tense mood. He pursed his lips and slightly inclined his head, but Flitwick turned away, silently.

Dumbledore broke through the awkward hush, “Yes, then. I thought not. Katla Freyan will arrive tomorrow.”

October 30th, Snape realized. Of course, nine years to the day.

~***~

The meeting was over, the groan of chair springs keeping time with the creaking of aging bones as staff members rose and stretched and murmured to one another.

Snape sat frozen. He was immersed in a fog of pain. He vividly remembered the Icelandic cliffs…had the chill from that morning ever left his core…

He struggled to pull his thoughts back to a semblance of clarity.

On a peripheral level, he knew that the librarians were lingering, casting furtive glances at him. Since their arrival at Hogwarts last Spring, they always seemed to be on the edges of his presence. Was he imagining this or was there a truth to it, he wondered idly, still trying to draw his thoughts down to that sharper point. He had given them no more consideration than he did any of the other staff who played less than minor roles in his day-to-day existence at the school, yet, by the very virtue of this new feeling of familiarity, perhaps he should be paying a bit more attention.

He looked up and indeed two pairs of eyes were studying him. The staff room was now empty but for the three of them. He scowled and stood, refusing to indulge his body with any form of stretching or deep breath. He held himself taut on the balls of his feet as he adjusted his robes.

Crossing his arms, he looked at the young women in front of him. “Tell me,” he purred, and was rewarded with two flashes of teeth and smiles. "You are always together, never apart?”

The one giggled and the other smiled nervously. He raised an eyebrow in question.

“What do you mean, exactly, professor?” smiled the one in a flirtatious manner.

His eyebrow dropped menacingly.

“I mean exactly that.” Why was he playing with them like this, he asked himself. He needed to be alone. Immediately. But an inner demon preferred to shake him out of his current state of unease. He heard himself speak again, “Perhaps you embody a sort of mental Siamese twinship?”

Both stood quietly. “Well, we are identical,” spoke one softly.

“We’ve been together since conception,” echoed the other.  
“But you make it sound,” said the first.

“As if that were a bad thing,” finished the second.

“Unless,” the first one again, with a wicked smile, “you have some,” he watched in utter disbelief as she slowly licked the length of her top lip, “curiosity that needs to be satisfied?”

“Curiosity doesn’t always kill the cat, you know?” whispered the other sister.

Severus Snape’s inner demon was howling in glee, he surmised. His thoughts were very intently focused now. He should have seen this, he berated himself silently. He was very nearly in over his head; but he did welcome the comfort of having his senses sharpened to the glittering knife's edge that was his usual self. Yes, that felt good. He looked from the lip licker to her mirrored sister, and the corner of his own, thin, upper lip lifted slightly in a sneer he knew from experience was deadly to amorous feelings.

"Evangeline and Madeline,” he drew their names out slowly, “such a quick and generous offer to satiate my,” he raised an eyebrow and dropped the curling lip, “curiosity, was it?” He imagined his tongue dripping with poisoned honey, “Perhaps it would be best to remember, the only boast that the mice can make is that they beat the cat to the grave.”

He swept past them.

~***~

The fact that he had charmed his wards to allow him the satisfaction of slamming the door to his private quarters didn’t bring his usual smirk. His long strides took him to the cabinet of wizard spirits and muggle liquor; he flung open the tall doors and stared at the vast collection of liquids, each whispering a promise of respite and forgetting.  
While deciding whether he wanted to temporarily empty his mind of these current thoughts or just dull the cutting edges, he brutally tore at the silvered clasp that closed his robes and they thudded to the floor, a dark pool around his feet. He leaned into the cabinet and brought out a heavy, crystal glass and his oldest bottle of talisker. As he levitated the glass and poured the whiskey, he could feel his shoulders itching to be rid of the weight of his woolen frock coat. He sneered at himself, grabbed at the half full glass of amber liquid and downed it in one gulp. A grimace of satisfied pain rode across the sharp plains of his face, the butterscotch fire roaring down his throat. He waited for the smoky aftertaste, then refilled the glass and returned the bottle to a dark corner inside the cabinet.

He would just grind off the surgical precision of the memories, then.

The Headmaster’s announcement certainly was a sign of something much bigger than a substitute instructor. It boded of things which would need to be examined and considered with some semblance of consciousness. The situation with the twin librarians was another thing altogether and required no more thought. He was to blame for not having noticed their interest before, in the same way that he was to blame for now having drawn perhaps more of their attentions. What was the saying, “Keep your friends close, your enemies closer?” Well, he had just added two to the crowd he held within his embrace…he couldn’t help but snicker at the dichotomy of it. He hadn’t held anyone in his arms since forever and now he was holding legion closer than any lover. The dragoon mating dance, he thought bitterly.

He kicked his robes against the wall, walked to the fireplace, fiercely setting the glass down on the hearth. He began to claw at the buttons that kept the fitted coat closed around him. He shrugged out of the garment and threw it into one of the two worn armchairs.

Spitting out the word “Incendio,” the resultant warmth from the blazing hearth fire confirmed that the cold on his skin was indeed chill seeping up out of his pores. Slowly he unbuttoned his stiffly starched dress shirt and then in one fluid motion shook it from his body, balled it up and threw it with all his might into the fire. He watched it catch and marveled as a flower of regret bloomed inside his brain; the waste of fine cloth, craftsmanship and a month’s wages.

He stood, staring into the flames, observing the shirt burn and collapse into a fine grey ash. He felt better for being rid of the heavier outer garments; his tightly cut black trousers, his leather boots and the shimmering pale gold of the finely woven undershirt gave him a feeling of personal freedom he never felt in his coat and robes. But looking at the embers of his shirt, he closed his eyes tightly and wondered why he sacrificed it. An offering to some vague god of emotionalism, he sneered.

Retrieving his glass, he dropped himself into an armchair. He took a deep breath and then another and then another and wondered if perhaps he might be on the verge of tears.  
Great Hecate, he thought to himself, I’m having some sort of nervous breakdown.  
‘Katla Freyan’ The sound of her name played inside his head. He remembered the other one’s name and let it fall from his lips like a reverent prayer, “Gerda Solveig.”

Yes, it was going to be tears, he realized, and with the same dread and revulsion usually reserved for vomiting, Snape squared his shoulders and willed his body not to betray him in that way. He would rather retch his emotions out than succumb to tears. He leaned forward and placed the heavy tumbler on the floor, with both hands locked behind his neck, he pulled his head down to his knees. He counted to ten in Latin, then on to twenty in French, to thirty in German, forty in Gaelic and finally, finally began to feel his eyes harden and his throat relax.

Leaning back again in the chair, he grasped two handfuls of the golden shirt that had come to define the hidden parts of him over the past nine years. He rolled the material between his thumbs and forefingers, marveling at it. His mind opened to the remembrance of her floor-length braid, the witch who sawed at its great thickness with glinting shears, the one who washed it clean of vomit and blood, the other witch who wove it while singing a wordless song of numbing loss.

He remembered the first weeks of his harrowing need to scratch it off his body and then the slow resignation to it, to its unique discomfort; the shirt that had been made from Gerda Solveig’s pale blonde hair.

~***~

The night wore on, the talisker finally doing his bidding, warming his guts and bringing the sharp drumming in his mind to a slow beating he could bear. The room was buried in shadows and the flames from the fire danced in time to his breathing.

After what seemed like hours spent slumped in the chair, rolling the empty tumbler between his palms, Snape arrived at the place inside his thoughts where he knew that the next step would take him into the memories from that long-ago day. That place was no stranger to him, he recognized its landscape clearly from his other visits, but for the first time he found himself wishing he could return to the memories of Gerda Solveig’s murder with fresh eyes, from an outsider’s point of view. He wanted the pensieve of the Gods to be set before him, a mystic third party observant, which would clearly reveal the terrible course of events that led to his turning from the Dark Lord and seeking out what had become his reformation.

He had spent years of his life reconstituting the now dry memories from those days. His body had become the waterbath for the brew which he insisted on mixing from the vast stores of his recollections. Each memory, each smell, each touch had become an ingredient as he willed the brew to coalesce into something tangible he could hold in his mind. He wanted to boil away all the material and be left with something hard, something worthwhile, the elusive philosopher’s stone that would transform him at its touch. But, he was missing something, something in the stirring of the cauldron, and the brew would not turn.

Even now, to return to it, with the knowledge that he would be in the presence of a Norn sister within less than twenty-four hours, he could only collect the same memories, brew the same impotent tincture, always lead, always lead.

And yet.

He closed his eyes and stepped back into the house where the witch was held captive, her death less than day long hours from her, her body still fresh, before the torture shattered it, her mind still intact, before the agonizing pain would melt it.

There had been a rumbling in the magical world the moment that the Dark Lord succeeded in capturing the Norn. It had felt like tremors in the Earth, a fault in the physical world opening and shifting. He had felt it and when he was summoned to the place where she was being held, he found himself staggering from the realization that it had been her abduction which had moved the ground under all their feet.

Voldemort knew that he couldn’t hold the force of her in the magical world, so Snape had found himself in a Muggle place, a non-descript house in a neighborhood of other such houses. Each one alike, each filled with lives that were nothing like his life or the lives lived in his world. At one point, he had inquired about it and been told that they were in a place called Los Angeles. He could feel the despair of all the souls trapped there and he wondered at the depravity of humans who would choose to live out their lives in such a manner. Later he would wonder if it was an unseen power of that place - the pain of souls tortured by their own hand – that had turned Voldemort’s plans inside out. The City of Angels, indeed.

The family whose house they were occupying lay in the front room, swimming in congealed pools of their own blood, shredded by Death Eater foot soldiers. The Death Eaters were a concentric entity, building from an outside circle to the center where Voldemort stood. The first circle was a vicious collection of wizards and witches who were little more than murdering puppets, finding their purpose in the more mundane exploits of killing. As each circle tightened closer to the center a depravity of skills grew exponentially around the bull’s-eye of throned horror. Snape knew he stood very near that throne. He was one of the younger Death Eaters, at twenty-one years of age, and the only alchemist among them.

As he strode through the house, his nerves stretched painfully under his skin; he would soon be called upon to play his part. This killing field was fresh, far more so than he was accustomed. He was usually summoned by the Dark Lord much later in an encounter, his skills being honed for precise extraction, harvesting for the darker brewing, not the brutal felling that occurred in the beginning of an encounter. The sickening smells of fear and blood and slow death were undeniable in this place, he was unused to it and found that he couldn’t stand it. He sought a neutral place.

Over the course of that first day, the small house began to fill with the more powerful players and he realized that this was intended to be one of Voldemort’s triumphs. The capture of this witch was a coup and it had all the markings of dark destiny upon it. Voldemort would not appear until the bitter end, with his hands clean, grasping what he insisted be taken.

Snape had found a corner for himself and silently occupied it, ignoring the comings and goings of the crowd. An introvert to the core, he preferred to wrap himself in isolation. He had contained his thoughts by mulling over an idea borne from a dream; he was failing to brew a particular potion because of the way the ingredients were being harvested. Voldemort had encouraged him to explore the darkest aspects of potions-making and he had indeed created brews he would never have been able to discover without the Dark Lord’s permission, this latest struggle, however seemed to be hinged upon the concept that the ingredients could not be murdered for and instead needed to be given.

The hours of contemplation had cocooned around him but when he heard the woman begin to scream, something drove him towards the back room where she was being kept.

He came up to the door, stopping at its threshold. The curdling smell of urine washed over him and he restrained the urge to cover his nose and mouth. Two figures moved aside so that he could see the inner workings of the room. She was there, being held upright by some spell of restraint, her arms pinioned over her head and her hands reaching for the heavens in supplication. The process had begun. The crude physical beating would be first, then the lengthy sexual attack before the curses and finally….he suppressed a shuddered.

She was clothed in the robes of her Coven and still veiled. Snape knew that he wasn’t the only one present who had never been this close to a veiled witch. It felt surreal, these women were the highest order of witches in the magical world and before this moment he had never come close to contemplating one being trussed up for slaughter. His stomach gripped. A figure moved towards her and began to rip at her clothing; each move in protest bringing a brutal blow to her face. Then she hung naked, her head lolling on her shoulders, the telltale floor length braid of her Coven swinging freely down her back. Blood dripped steadily from her nose and mouth and one ear.

And she was heavily pregnant.

Snape felt his stomach turn over again, he had known that this was what the Dark Lord had wanted, but to be within the presence of it was not what he had expected for himself. From some deep curve in his intestines, his guts convulsed and cramped and a dry pain surged up into his lungs and around his heart. He had never felt anything like it and as it squeezed his organs, he gasped. His brain recognized this mutiny. He was feeling shame. A heart-twisting shame brought on by his involvement with the torture of this human being and her unborn child.

Suddenly, her head lifted and she looked directly at him. His eyes widened and something passed between them and he was knocked backwards by an invisible blow. His body hit the wall of the hallway and he fell forward onto all fours. He heard her scream out as a Death Eater stepped forward and delivered a terrible blow to her torso. He felt as though he had been the one to receive the pain. He threw up and his vomit covered his hands. Again she was hit and again he retched. Someone reached down for him and he violently repelled them with his voice and wandless magic. “Irae!”

He had to get out of that space, away from her and the screams which seemed to be tearing out of his own lungs. He pulled himself up the wall and shouldered his way through the small group of observers. He stumbled towards a door that led outside and quickly altered the wards so that he could step out into a magic place, he fell heavily against it, twisted the knob and found himself on the edge of a cliff, the ocean raging below him and the freezing cold of the place shocking his skin. Again, he was on all fours and he dropped his head and looked behind him, the door now gone. He fell to his chest on the rocky tundra and welcomed the loss of consciousness.

~***~

Damnation was neither heat nor the dreaded flame, he concluded. His eyes still closed, his cheek pressed into the hard ground; he had fallen onto his left shoulder, his knees splayed awkwardly beneath him. He was freezing, the blood in his veins sluggishly wending its way through muscle, bone and organ, his skin a searing enclosure.

He heard the ocean roaring beneath him and the cry of a bird. He decided to open his eyes.

He was still where he had been when he stumbled through the door of the muggle house. And where was that exactly, he thought bitterly. He remembered re-warding the door so that he could step out into this place, but what was this place. Slowly he knelt and swallowed a yelp of pain as his blood picked up its tempo and began to warm his icy skin and limbs. His bones felt as though released from a vise. How long had he lain there?

He was on a cliff, above the ocean, the ground beneath him rock smoothed over with a mossy growth. He saw no trees. The sky was a thick silver, midday. A bird hung suspended on an air current off to his right, her wings spread wide, stillness above the raging sea.

He stood. He reached for his wand and it was there, tucked into the Death Eater robe, in the same pocket as the mask. He fished out the slender wood and moved it into the front pocket of his trousers. With both hands he began to tear at the robe, ripping it from his shoulders, it caught around his neck and the clasp tore a gouge of flesh from his collarbone and still he ripped it from his body. He was like an animal tearing at a restraint and finally he was free of it. He rubbed fiercely at his mouth with it, rubbed at his hands, and then stumbling to the edge of the cliff he threw the robe over. A stiff breeze caught the black material, twisted it down through the air until it landed on the breaking waves below, and he watched as it was pulled under the dark green surface of the sea.

He stared out over the seemingly endless ocean and felt it call to him, he felt its age old pull, the insistent lure of its depths. Like the knife that wanted to cut him, like the poison that wanted to be drunk, he felt the sea request his drowning. He bowed his head and considered the option; to breathe water. He stepped closer to the brittle edge. The sea was now all he could hear, its voice roaring around his head, lapping at his ears with its salty tongue and pounding his eardrums with its wet promise of oblivion. He opened his arms wide, balanced on the balls of his feet, threw his head back and considered…

He could do it, he should do it, he heard the voices batter him inside his head, his mother, his father, schoolmates from his youth. But there was another voice now. Not his own, not the voice of the waves, but her voice. He could hear the silent plea that had been fed into his mind by the sheer will of the witch. The witch who was being tortured under the Dark Lord’s command, the witch who had somehow chosen him. He realized that that was how he had come to be where he was, it was her will that had shown him this place.

But why.

He stepped back away from the cliff’s edge and with his wand out, he attempted to transfigure the thin material of his shirt into a woolen jumper. He half succeeded and the additional bit of warmth pleased him. He turned away from the sea, and there was a woman standing in front of him.

A lifetime of tamping down his reflexes allowed him to remain still and straight, a small twitch at one corner of his lips and a slight widening of his eyes the only things revealing how startled he was. Her steady gaze betrayed nothing. She was older than anyone he had ever encountered, her face a weathered visage of flesh-gilded bone, her hair so white it seemed nearly transparent. She had her left arm raised; a dark grey gyrfalcon perched on her forearm.

She looked relaxed, standing easily, observing him and he decided that she must have been there since he came through the door.

“Would you have watched me jump,” he whispered this, “Grandmother?”

She stared at him for a long time, then spoke clearly, “You did not choose to jump, Child.”

“But if I had…” he pressed her. “If I had, chosen, then…”

”Then I could not have stopped you.” She inclined her head to him and he pursed his lips together, scowling darkly.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“Who am I? Who am I? I would have answered you differently this morning." He covered his eyes with a long-fingered hand. "I do not know anymore." His hand dropped to his mouth and his fingers traced his lower lip absently, "I found my way here, through a muggle place.” She flinched at the word. “A witch is being murdered. I think she sent me. I do not know why.”

The old woman nodded and Snape’s attention was drawn to the movement at her back, the white braid of hair trailing to the ground.

“She is from the Norn Coven,” he said thickly.

“Yes.”

Another silence stretched between them.

“Could you tell me where I am?” he asked.

“You have found your way to Hornbjarg,” she answered him. “And to the Norn Coven.”

They stared at one another.

As he looked into her pale blue eyes, he remembered the intense gaze of the other witch. What had she filled him with? Snape felt at the hollowness inside him, the hollowness which had always been a part of his existence. It was different. This day had been a lifetime it seemed. Could he even remember awakening that morning? The summons to that house, seeing the pregnant witch, finding himself here. All of this day was pouring into him and like filling a cold glass with a hot liquid, he wondered if he could survive it.

She was watching him. “There is nothing for you here, Grandson. You must return.”

“She will die. Her child will be sacrificed,” his voice was pleading.

“She will die. Her child will be sacrificed,” her voice was resigned.

“She sent me here.”

“That was unexpected. And that is why you must return.”

“I don’t know what is wanted of me.”

“Nor do I.”

“I will be broken.”

“You will be tempered.”

He covered his face with his hands. And as he had stood upon the sea cliff’s edge just moments before, he found himself, again, on an edge, but this time over a looming chasm and its shadowed depths. There were voices urging him, again, but this time the voices were spoken in tones of nobility and honour and courage. They were the voices of The Fates speaking the words of destiny. He spread his arms as wide as they would reach and dove.

~***~

He had apparated back to his own rooms. He lay curled on the floor, a fetal ball of pain; he bit at the backs of his hands, grinding his teeth along his knuckles. His stomach was heavy again with a nausea that would not be released, his guts wanting to reject everything he had consumed that day.

His left arm felt as though scraped raw, the Dark Mark searing its request into his flesh, the Dark Lord demanding his return.

He pulled himself to his feet, a body memory assuming that he would heed the Dark Lord’s call. He stood, unsteadily, and began to pace, slowly, laboriously, limbs reluctant to comply, his torso so weak with cramps that both his knees shook. And not for the first time in twenty-one years he wondered why his lot seemed to be that of punishment, his portion flayed? A snatch of something played over in his mind ‘drunk on self-delusion and punished by desire” his feet stumbled it out almost rhythmically, the words became an accusing pulse in his veins, was that how he defined himself, explained the choices he had made?

Contemplation felt almost like a balm, if he could just sit and think and ponder. On what exactly? His childhood and youth, his choices, the unspeakable things he had been doing the past three years under Voldemort’s reign over him. But he could not stop his pacing, could not fall into a reverie. Daily, he carried the knowledge that the only passion he had ever known had come with the taking of the Mark. Bitterly he had accepted that the spark of desire he had felt when the seemingly endless possibilities had been presented to him at his first meeting with the Dark Lord had never been fanned into the conflagration he had been promised. He pressed his balled fists into the tender spot below his ribs, he had neither the time nor the stomach for such thoughts now…

He would have to return, what was this journey and who was beckoning him to embark?

He stopped in the center of his small room, he was without robes, without mask, and his heart’s journey was being illuminated by a dying woman. He grimaced to keep from laughing in the face of his unknown destiny. Swallowing a huge lungful of air, he reached out a tentative hand to the Dark Mark and let it portkey him back to Los Angeles.

~***~

Nine years away, Snape savagely leapt to his feet, up out of the chair, alone in his chambers at Hogwarts, Samhain eve upon him. He could hear the veil rending, but no, it was the gears of the ancient grandfather clock in the corner, grinding against the gear that wound the chime. Half-way through the witching hour.

He would have to begin a long day of instruction in less than seven hours

The fire lay spent and smoldering on the grate. The room was almost cruel in its chill and he wondered why his lot seemed to be that of ice, his portion frozen and he wondered, not for the first time, why he would never be thought to have possessed “some heart once pregnant with celestial fire.” He spat into the fire, furious. Even his rage was frigid, frigid, frigid.

Unconsciously mimicking his twenty-one year old memory self, he brought both of his long-fingered elegant hands up to cradle his face. This was deeper into the memory than he had allowed himself to go for a long, long time. He was remembering everything. Pressing firmly against his brow with the pads of his fingers, massaging his clammy temples with the sides of his thumbs, he wanted nothing more than to will his head to clear, his mind to empty itself of the images.

He began to pace the length of the small room. Walk, and walk, and walk an all too familiar track. To keep from running, to keep from bolting out into the unknown. But he couldn’t walk it off this time, wouldn’t allow himself the escape. He felt something shifting within him, the brew was going to turn, the inner glass egg reached its point of dissolution and from some hitherto unknown part of him his emotions became a torrent and flooded the barren landscape of his memories.

Albedo. At last, at last.

He felt his face bathed in tears and with a howl of grief so piercing that it hung ringing in his ears long after his lungs expelled the rage and pain he let himself be washed clean. The man he had become felt his heart break for the boy he had once been. The boy who had known only castigation and grew into the young man taking the Dark Mark to assuage the guilt of his stain free conscience. That young man had found a crime to fit the punishment.

He stopped in front of the hearth, two large hands splayed on the mantel; he stood spread-eagled there, staring down at the cremated remains of his shirt. The glowing embers shimmered like red jewels, not enough warmth to dry his face. His heavy gaze to become a stare and he followed it back down into the dank cellar of his memories.

~***~

All conversation ceased immediately as Snape appeared in the front room of the small house, now an abattoir. Their silence hung like a heavy accusation, weaving its wicked denouncement in and out amongst the gathered Death Eaters. Snape let his eyes become hooded as his face closed in a guarded expression of self-assurance. He warded his mind against any thoughts which could be read and construed as traitorous, but his heart leapt up as he quickly realized that Voldemort was not yet there.

A hooded figure stepped forward, Snape swallowed back the rising bile as the other threw back her hood revealing the perfectly coiffed black mane and exquisite sneering face, “You’ve returned.” She paused and stared at the young man in front of her, “And where, if you please, is it that you’re returning from?” Her hostile, searching eyes taking in Snape’s unrobed appearance, the bizarre half-transfigured shirt, willing the younger man to strip himself of the careful veneer he was wearing.

“I will not answer to you, Bellatrix.” Snape spit this out with enough controlled volume for all present to hear him.

Lestrange’s eyes widened and just as quickly narrowed dangerously. With a sudden movement of cruel grace she slapped him, rocking his head back and watched with satisfaction as his thin upper lip bloomed a dark drop of blood and began to swell.

Refusing to touch his bruising face in front of her, Snape hissed “You dare to strike me?” flicking his wand down out of his sleeve.

Faster than lightening Lestrange had the blunt tip of her own wand pressed into Snape’s belly, “I dare to strike you, I would just as soon kill you. But you are yet too valuable, I’m being told." Her eyes glinting like two daggers. "Do not think for a moment that you can best me. It will be a most fatal error. And one that I lie awake at night dreaming of.” With her wandless hand she grabbed for Snape’s testicles and brutally closed her fingers around them. “You are half a man, Severus. No fire, a dead thing. You disgust me. Book-learning and skulking through your laboratories.” She shoved him hard and Snape went sprawling backwards, twisting in his fall, landing hard on one knee. “You have yet to prove yourself to me, and I daresay you will soon enough become a tiresome indulgence to our Master as well.”

Snape stood, his chest heaving, his mind swallowing these revelations, the world narrowed to him and Lestrange. He had known that she did not like nor trust him, but he hadn’t known to what depths. How many of the others shared her venomous hatred of him?

“What is the meaning of this?” the drawn-out sneering tone of Voldemort’s voice froze everyone in the room. He stood in the doorway, towering over all present, his face a closed aspect of fury. A short figure shook beside him, his hood thrown back revealing the mottled pudgy face of Peter Pettigrew.

Snape bowed his head at the Dark Lord, taking the proffered hand and as he bent low to kiss the long, thin fingers, the hand was pulled out of his grasp. “You are bleeding, Severus Snape.” Voldemort’s tone was accusing and poisonous.

Snape rubbed at his lip. “My apologies, Master.”

But he had already been dismissed, Voldemort turned on Lestrange releasing a hiss of displeasure. “Crucio.” She fell to the ground at his feet and crumpled into her robe, her face hidden from them all. Voldemort crooked a finger at another figure who walked forward and hauled Lestrange back to a standing position, her hair untidily hanging in her eyes now, spittle flowing from her mouth. The Dark Lord reached out and grasped the woman’s face, pinching it between his impossibly long thumb and forefinger. “Do not ever touch him.” He shook her face in his hand, “Ever.” With an inhuman strength he threw Lestrange away from him, she fell heavily against the wall, unconscious.

Snape watched this peripherally, his mind was whirring trying to deduce a reason for Pettigrew’s presence there. He despised the mewling coward. A Marauder. His crooked, jowly face brought to many unpleasant recollections to Snape’s mind, memories of a time and place he had actively worked to forget.

Voldemort strode purposely out of the room, leaving Pettigrew to blanch, his tiny eyes darting like moths against a flame. Snape watched the little man’s eyes squeeze shut and his mouth parch open as a scream rent the air of the house and climbed and climbed and climbed the scales of human voice until it seemed to become a sound that only nature could make, and yet Snape knew it was the witch.

A form in the hallway motioned to him and he followed it back to the room where the witch now hung from the arms of a hooded Death Eater. He stood behind her, his hands vised under her upper arms, her body dangling, thighs splayed. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, more blood on the floor than could be believed possible to have been let from a single human form. Voldemort stood to one side, observing the pregnant body with the steady eye of a hunter mesmerizing its prey.

“Severus, we are so close. So close, my loyal alchemist,” the Dark Lord whispered. “Is the potion ready for its final ingredient?” His hand reached out and caressed the jerking roundness of the witch’s abdomen. Another scream climbed to the Heavens.

Snape trusted himself only to nod and was surprised to hear his voice, “Yes, Master, it is ready.”

“You will be rewarded. You will be remembered.” Voldemort’s voice caressed him. He turned to the others in the room. “We shall wait until midnight to cut him out of her body. Not one minute before not one minute after. Do not disappoint me.”

Snape closed his eyes, shaking his head as the path beckoned, the journey was begun. There was a presence in the small, cramped room and it was reaching out to him, entering him. It was the dying witch. He thought of the Icelandic cliff, the Norn Grandmother. The presence began to fill him and he saw this younger woman full of life immersed in a different reality on that frozen plain. He had never known a pregnant woman but he could see this one counting down her days to be delivered, aching with a mother’s love, willing to endure nature’s opening of her body, stepping into the stream of evolution, washing herself in the waters of all womankind, ablutions to the Goddess.

And now she would not survive her child’s murderous birth, would not see the dawning of the new day, and he had been playing a vital role in the horror. Yet, that seemed somehow pushed aside, emptied from his body and he felt the presence of the woman inside of him. A threaded point of light pierced through the membrane of his heart and anchored itself there.

“Tom Riddle.”

A woman’s steady voice.

Snape's brain seized at the sound of this unmentionable name. His eyes snapped open. The room seemed to shimmer, magic swirling around the hanging figure, eddies of it flowing from her body. She had one swollen eye prised open, fixed upon Voldemort, her other eyelid twitched under a thickening of dried blood, her lips were parted revealing teeth broken at the gumline, but from this mouth she had uttered the Dark Lord’s halfblood name.

Snape felt his life force spin out of him in a fine line of tension, spinning, spinning away from him. His focus followed the skein of energy as it flowed into the witch’s orb. Something within him pulled the thread taut and it vibrated between them, strumming the chambers of his heart.

Voldemort stood stiff, his mouth gaping. But before he could move, before a breath was drawn by any of them, the mother brought her broken hands up to hold her belly and with a whisper of love she spoke the killing curse.

“Avada Kedavra.”

“NO!” Voldemort’s scream ripped through the air, severing the tie between Snape and the witch. Snape fell backwards and watched as Voldemort leapt at the witch and threw her hands off her swollen form. With a crushing blow, he brought a hand across the front of her face, still screaming, “No! No! No!” He pummeled her again. And again.

The Dark Lord vaulted over her falling body and onto the Death Eater, with vicious blows and screeched curses he brutalized the man. The other two Death Eaters scrambled away from his insane fury, tripping over their dying comrade, slipping in the blood, tangling in robes, and then they were out the door. The Dark Lord spun like a spider with one too many flies in its web, his long arms reaching out and disappeared into the hallway.

Snape heard him screaming in the front room, the noise of the house a deafening din of rage. Then words broke through, the Dark Lord’s voice clear, “I want her rent, limb from limb, send her hands to Bagnold! Send her head to Crouch! Wrap her heart in her veil and deliver it to Dumbledore!”

Faster than he had ever known he could move, Snape was on his feet. He scooped her up, her broken body heavy; he was out the door of the room, casting a quick concealment charm upon them both. Then he was at the same warded door he had stepped through just hours before.

And holding the dying witch in his arms, the life-force of her child gone from her, he returned to Hornbjarg.

~***~

The Grandmother was waiting for them. And she was not alone this time. A small circle of women, their faces drawn and closed but their eyes wide and vulnerable, stood resolutely by her side.

Snape trod helplessly forward, the witch in his arms, a gruesome pantomime of stepping over the threshold to the bridal chamber. He felt, rather than heard, the doorway between the worlds close and disappear. He let out a deep breath.

“Have you learned what was wanted of you, Child?” the Grandmother asked this of him.

He shook his head, not trusting himself to respond. Had he found that answer? He did not think so, just more questions, questions which seemed to be defined by emotions rather than rational intellect. He was crippled by such puzzles.

“I see,” the Grandmother said softly, looking into his dark eyes. He closed them. She stepped forward and Snape, sensing her movement towards him, opened his eyes and watched as she lay a hand on the dying woman’s bruised brow.

His gaze was intent on the Grandmother’s face, but he turned his own away as the older woman began to weep, tears falling silently, heavy but fragile drops from her rheumy eyes. She motioned for the other women to approach and they closed the circle with Snape and his precious armful. Each one reached out and touched the woman he held. Whispers rose and spiraled around them all.

“Goodbye, sister.”

“It is time to go.”

“I love you.”

“I will look for you.”

“You are safe.”

“I will dream of you.”

“You will be remembered.”

“I will never forget you.”

“Farval, Gerda.”

The Grandmother’s voice, strong yet still a whisper, soaked by the salt of her tears, intoned, “Let go. Let go. Let go. Lycka och framgång, Daughter.” And Snape felt his own face wash with tears. He looked down at the witch in his arms, he felt her shudder, her body convulsed and he strengthened himself under the movements of her leaving.

She hung limply in his embrace. She was gone.

The Earth continued Her celestial revolutions, the Moon dancing around Her, attracting the attention of the Sun. The waves rose and crashed upon all the shores of all the lands. Babies were made and born and human beings lived and died. Trees were felled and became shelters. Plants sprouted from the dirt and became sustenance. Animals lay down and emptied their lungs and returned to that from which they were created. Gods and Goddesses laughed and wept, questions were asked and answers revealed. Day became Twilight and became Night and Night became Dawn and became Day.

Snape was warded and protected from those who would do him tortuous injury and he slept the sleep of the dreaming. And all the dreams which he was gifted with in that sleeping became the talismans that would guide his life. When he awoke, he assumed the posture of the prayerful and held it.

Time was no longer measured in minutes and hours, but rather by the revolutions of his blood, the circulation of his lymph. His heart was mired in a whirlpool of shame and he could not take a breath without a sinking feeling within his breast. He was responsible, he was guilty. He had committed grievous harm to others and ultimately to himself. And as he began to navigate the shifting currents and dangerous undertows, Gerda Solveig and her unborn child rose above the dark waters and became his redeemers.

The witches of the Norn Coven wove their sister’s hair into a shirt, and Snape donned it without question.

He was sitting on the cliff’s edge again. He truly had no idea what day it was or how long he had been on Hornbjarg. He found himself wishing his long-abandoned childhood wish for wings. He heard the sound of people approaching and still he stared out across the sea, letting the possibilities of the wish tantalize him.

“Severus,” a soft voice he knew but couldn’t place. Slowly he turned and looked up into the face of Albus Dumbledore. The Grandmother was standing beside him.

Snape stood and with hands clasped uncharacteristically in front of him, he bowed his head. “Sir,” he said quietly.

The Headmaster reached out a tentative hand and gently grasped the young man’s shoulder. “You have embarked upon a journey that has called for great bravery and, I fear, will continue to test your courage. The path is still long and shadowed in places, but yours no longer needs be a solitary trek, my son.” The ancient wizard let a smile pull at the corners of his lips, his eyes filling with pride, “I’ve come to bring you home.”

Snape’s head snapped up, his face flushed with fear. “Home? I do not understand.”

Albus smiled sadly at him, “I know that in this moment you are feeling confused. That is, of course, in these extraordinary circumstances, to be expected. There is much for you and I to discuss with one another.” He looked piercingly at him, “I will begin by telling you that the Dark Lord was defeated three nights ago.” Snape’s face twitched, a grimace folding across his mouth. “A child, just barely a year old, has succeeded in destroying Voldemort.” Again, Snape’s facial muscles spasmed and the grimace buried itself below his nose. “This child, this incredible boy child, was empowered by the great love of his mother. And that mother, Severus, unbeknownst to her was empowered by the great love of the Norn witch, Gerda Solveig, and the sacrifice you helped her make.”

Snape let the words play inside the velvet whorls of his ears. He wrote them on the inside of his skull and stared at them with his mind’s eye. He tasted them upon his own tongue and felt them inside his mouth, behind his clenched teeth. He let them out, “Voldemort destroyed. Child empowered by a mother’s love. Empowered by the sacrifice a Norn witch made.” Still he did not understand them.

The grandmother stepped close to Snape and lifted one of his hands with her palsied fingers. She clasped it between both her palms. “Gerda and her sacrifice of self and babe became a pathway for Light because of your deference to honour. You were wanted and you entrusted yourself.”

Snape’s eyelids trembled shut. For a few, brief moments he set down the terrible weight of his Self and his soul soared free.

~***~

Severus Snape pulled himself up from the depths of another time, out of the memories of a person he no longer was. He stood straighter, rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles.

Well, that was just about that, then, was it not, he thought ruefully. He knew he was not finished with the remembering but he could stop there if need be. He had done it, returned to it, on the anniversary no less, and beheld the witch when she was still alive. This new day’s dawning would be bringing one of those witches from his past into his present, a sister of the Norn Coven come to Hogwarts to teach its children. Every day he donned the hair shirt and was hallowed in its pain, that past defining this present. Now he was ready to be rid of that which he had worn for these nine years. Like the snake who knows only fear and darkness as it sheds its own skin over its head, Snape felt apprehension but longed for renewal.

He was well aware that those who knew him now, in this form he had created from the raw materials of his previous self, considered him to be a dark pillar hewn from nature’s strongest stone. Yet, he was not. He was mud and sludge, beset by inner tremors so violent and constant as to shake the very teeth out of his head. He was growing exhausted from holding himself together.

Perhaps the night’s exploration and the dissolution it had brought forth would lead into the next stage of the process simmering darkly within him. The hardening. Already he felt a firm calmness at his core which he had never felt before, not the familiar sickly resignation, but a quiet acceptance. He had been a foolish young man full of hatred and fear, broken by the beastliness of others. He himself had been beaten and bent by his own punishing hand; it was taking years to release the brutal hold he had around his own neck.

He took a deep breath and stretched his arms languorously over his head, letting his body follow, rising up onto the balls of his feet and arching his long, lean back.

There were no windows in the dungeons and thus no windows in his private chambers, and he enjoyed that feeling of inward-turning privacy. He had never been one to look to the leaded glass and reflect upon the scene outside as though it had any affect on the scene within. He was in possession of a rare internal clock; and in many ways the seasons and the rhythms of the Earth moved within him as well as around him, his body an astrolabe. He knew without question that the sun was rising, that the day would be grey and dismal and wet until mid-afternoon, when it would be just grey and dismal and cold. The chill was settling on the corpse of summer.

With the long fingers of both hands, he combed through his thick, black hair and felt the cold sweat on his scalp, the skin of his cheeks stiff from his tears. He would bathe and then take a long and lonely walk before breakfast.

Ah, Severus, he berated himself, a lonely walk? Now where had that come from? Years of being his own best company; and still he could surprise himself with observations like those.

He sank into the lukewarm waters of his tub and pondered the thought that he might be lonely.

Another hour, and he was making brisk time around the large lake on the Hogwarts grounds. The sun was settled in the morning sky now, the Pleiades fading. He was surprised at how much energy he seemed to have. He was actually hungry. He found himself wondering when the Norn witch, Katla Freyan, would be arriving. The unknown element of the witch had him curious as to what, if any, role he might have in the unfolding play, for he knew without question that her arrival signaled the next act. The past few years had been the intermission, a time of quiet in the wizarding world, a time of deep mourning as many grieved the losses to Voldemort, the loss of their own innocence. But the grief was not proving to be healing; the world was an open, weeping wound.

He turned towards the school and hesitantly, like a tongue probing an aching tooth, thought back to the hours of conversation he had spent with Dumbledore when they left Hornbjarg together and returned to Hogwarts. No, he had had enough and his mind refused to open another door leading back down into the memories. He wanted respite and he gave himself the permission to seek it out. He would think of those wrenching hours of confession later. Now he was going to breakfast in the Great Hall.


	2. Chapter 2

Snape leaned forward in his chair, over his plate, elegantly forking the remains of what had been a very good Eggs Benedict into his mouth. He made a precise sweep of his lips with a cloth napkin, folded it three times and laid it on the plate, which promptly disappeared. Sitting back, a mug of coffee between his hands, he sipped slowly and looked over the rim surreptitiously at the gathered pupils. His own house seemed contained and he let his gaze drift to the Gryffindor table. His eyes narrowed dangerously as he watched the Weasley twins, heads bent very close together, scribbling on a parchment set on the table between them. He had little if no use for the antics and high-jinks of the two boys. They were only second years and had already served numerous detentions with Filch, an arrangement of which Snape was beginning to doubt the usefulness. He thought of the two spending some hours scrubbing cauldrons and filed that away for future consideration. Begrudgingly he admitted they were surprisingly quick-witted boys and he wondered at the application of such minds if their intents were devious in nature rather than comedic. He took a deep drink of the black, bitter brew and mused ‘which way turns the screw?’

He watched them share a smile and he scowled deeply.

The shine of them annoyed him and he let his gaze rake up and down both sides of the Gryffindor table, observing the innocence that illuminated each one of its house members. Of course they were courageous; he thought with a tremor of disgust, not a one of them had been marked by Life. When do the blessed become the cursed, he wondered. Some are born marked or struggle through an obscured childhood. Others invite it willingly or have it visited upon them, despairingly. When would these golden, shining children become marred and dulled? He looked away from their delighted faces and down the length of the staff table to where Dumbledore sat, quietly listening to something Minerva was telling him.

The man positively glowed, as if caught in some celestial beam of light. Yet, Snape knew that his was a broken heart intent upon beating strongly in spite of or despite its damage. A heartache that never diminished, the old man had told him, his voice cracking around the hollow truth of the words. For the second time that morning, Snape thought back to their return to Hogwarts nine years ago, the telling of the tales, the revealing of the paths chosen and abandoned. ‘We all are wounded by living’ the Headmaster had said, with that benevolence only he could make sound honourable and not a tad touched.

Snape looked back at his own house’s table and considered each student and how they carried their wounds. All of them wore a murky aura of damage. It affected their dealings with the world and with one another. Snape felt immensely comfortable with their caliginous projections. He looked at the other two remaining tables and did a quick mental tally of what little he knew of these students. He surmised that the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff houses seemed evenly divided between students who were wounded and those who were not.

Another draught of the black coffee, it was almost finished.

He looked back at the table of young lions. He had difficulty viewing it with a fair eye. He had been deeply injured by members of that house when he was a student. Injured in ways that had perplexed him at first, then enraged him and now, fifteen years later, perplexed him again. But one thing he had decided was that being Gryffindor had everything to do with what drove his enemies. He had been hated and despised before he had ever come to Hogwarts; he was not a stranger to receiving those emotions, but The Marauders - the stupid name they called themselves caught like a bone in his throat - had hated and despised him with a breathtaking, irrational unfairness. The breadth and depth of their hatred was like a fanged beast, there was no escape from it, and though he had never expected to be rescued, he wondered now, as an adult, if he might have been. The rabid bite of their loathing had infected him until he too frothed and foamed and raged.

He had accepted that he was a wounded creature. Dumbledore would say he defined himself by his scars. Was this true? The older he grew, the more he was called to chase the worm of doubt through the black hole of his heart and he wondered if it was courage he lacked, the courage to let it go.

He swallowed it all back down, closed his eyes for a brief second and breathed deeply. So often he felt as though insights like these washed up onto the shore of his consciousness, bereft of life, but shocking in the clarity of their beauty and utilitarian structure. He collected these shells with the shaking hand of a victorious beachcomber, holding them up, in turn to his ear, listening, listening, listening.

He stood quickly, almost violently, pushing the chair with the backs of his legs, standing away from the table. He smoothed down his robes, turned, and disappeared through the staff room door. He wanted to hear something of the Norn Witch.

~***~

He had skipped lunch in the Great Hall; the house elves had left him a meat pie on the desk in his office, and he ate it without thought while grading assignments. Now he was back in the classroom and the fourth year Slytherin/Gryffindor students were filtering in, with the agonizingly slow stroll of teenagers. He felt his hands clench into fists inside the sleeves of his robe. The long, sleepless night before was clinging thickly to him.

“I trust that this languishment comes from a particularly heavy noontime meal today? I must speak with the House Elves and request that we return to the tried and true bowl of hot broth and slice of stale bread.” Snape stood formidably at the front of the classroom, looking at each student in turn. He nodded as the last one scurried into place.

One of the Gryffindor girls towards the back raised her hand, boldly, he thought. He looked at her severely. “Miss Emory, is this in regards to today’s lesson, which, I might add, is already written out behind me?” She shook her head. “Then I suggest that you and your classmates narrow your attentions to the lesson at hand. Immediately.”

“Professor Snape, it’s not about potions but I just saw a veiled witch crossing the green.” A hushed murmur rose from the students.

Snape threw the girl a look of criticism and the students quieted; he walked down between the tables. “And this affected your sense of propriety to such a degree that you felt it necessary to interrupt my class with your thus far pointless observation? Forgive me if I state the obvious, Miss Emory, this is not Professor Trelawney’s classroom. You may not blurt out every random thought that flits through your heads in my classroom.”

A Slytherin boy snorted.

The girl blushed deeply and he watched her eyes grow wide. “I’m sorry, sir, I just, it was just that I, I have never seen a veiled witch with my own eyes before. I didn’t know…I mean, that you wouldn’t care.” She looked up at him, bold indeed, he admired her silently. “I thought it was something special.”

The air thinned between them, the girl’s nostrils flaring. Snape spoke softly, “It is, to use your own poetic vernacular, something special, Miss Emory.” He sighed and turned to the rest of the students. “On the contrary, I do, indeed care very much, however, I do not appreciate your using valuable class time to inform me of matters of which I am already quite well aware. Best to indulge your feelings of, giddiness, in the hallways or one’s common room.”

From behind him two Slytherin students snickered.

She nodded and whispered, “Yes, sir.”

He walked quickly to the front of the room and turned with a flourish of robes. He gestured at the blackboard behind him. “This is today’s assignment. You may thank Miss Emory and her fascinating report for losing you a very valuable four minutes of work time.”

He sat heavily in the chair behind his desk. So Katla Freyan had arrived.

~***~

He watched her enter the Great Hall and make her way through the seated, staring students towards the staff table. He could not control the beating of his heart; it was hammering wildly, wildly in his chest and echoing inside his ears. He drew in a quick, deep breath and felt the heaviness, the blood weight of the gravamen behind his Adam’s ribs.

She was veiled, the hood of a short cloak over her head, a platinum braid just skimming the floor behind her. She was not dressed in Hogwarts robes, but rather the multi-layered skirt and tunic and cloak of her coven in the colors of the Earth and Sky and Sea and Ice. He speculated whether, like the Eskimo with fifty-two different names for snow, these colors even had names in the English language, so heavily did they speak of Iceland. Snow and love and hatred. Birth and death and rain. Surely all human language should boast such wealth in describing the indescribable.

She drew closer. He would control his beating heart, his roiling blood and twisting guts. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. His wrenched his gaze from her progress and studied the students, most of them mouths agape. Dumbledore was standing now and tapping on his goblet. Freyan walked behind the Staff Table and stood at the chair beside the Headmaster. He smiled down at her.

“If I may have a moment of your attention.” He addressed the Great Hall. “Thank you,” his voice rang clear. “It is my pleasure to introduce Instructor Freyan. She will be assuming the History of Magic teaching position for the remainder of this school term. We are all very pleased to have her join us and trust that each one of you will benefit greatly from her instruction.” He sat back down and the witch sat slowly beside him.

She reached up and pushed off the hood, shrugged out of the open cloak, it slid down behind her. Snape watched as she lifted the veil over the back of her head and pulled the material from in front of her face. It settled into her lap. With a quiet stillness she turned and looked down the long table at him.

He could not think. His heart slowed to fifty-two beats within a minute. He counted each one.

On the fifty-third beating of his heart, she looked away.

~***~

 

 _The ground was frozen; he could not dig any deeper. His hands were bloody, torn scraps. His hands were the winding sheet of death and the pregnant witch was wrapped within them. How could he deliver the stillborn child? His hands weren’t large enough to hold everything. The grave was shallow. He laid her down. Was she his Queen of Winter? He was the King of Fall. He threw his crown of twisted canes of blackberries onto her corpse. He would refuse the throne. She looked cold, he felt cold. He climbed down into her shallow bed and pulled her body to his and embraced her as he drifted into a glacial sleep._

Snape woke into the dark of the early morning hours, it was HallowTide. He was breathing like a spent horse run too hard. Turning heavily onto his stomach and bringing both arms up under his head he cradled himself back into slumber.

 _He was in a field of Autumnal dry grasses and withered winding vines with their forgotten fruit, cracked pumpkins spilling bellies full of seeds. She was coming for him. His heart was pounding with anticipation and excitement. She was coming. For him. He could feel her approach. He was crouched naked on his knees, his arms encircling his head, hands clasped behind his neck. He pushed his face into the cold earth of the meadow. He felt his shoulder blades crack and burst from the skin of his back. Massive wings begin to unfurl from his body. Was she coming from above, hands reaching down for him? Or was she rising from below, hands reaching up for him? He wanted to stand to look about for her, but his knees were locked and he could not move. His face was in the dirt and stalks and he lay prostrated before the fact of her approach. He closed his eyes and in his dream he slept._

~***~

The week dragged on and Snape felt as though he were trudging through a wood darkened by an endless night, stumbling beneath an interminable new moon. He had somehow lost his way. The staff meeting appeared like a dawn-drenched meadow.

He sat stiffly, flanked again, by the two librarians. Since the last meeting he knew he had become a focus for them and he was frustrated at their tenacious pursuit. They would not relent, choosing to interpret his hostility through their own longings, hearing flirtatious banter in his dismissive words. He would just as soon not speak to them again, but he used the library extensively and realized it would be disadvantageous to alienate them. Things were difficult enough in his life without having to hurdle obstacles of his own making. As it was, he had not ventured into the library once in the past seven days.

He fumed immobile, caught between the twins, he would not move, would not breath out audibly, would not even bend to collect a quill. Any movement from him seemed to be echoed by them. It ground his nerves raw.

He had caught them looking at him near constantly, at meals, in the hallways, at the Quidditch match on Saturday. Perhaps it only seemed constant as there were two of them and he assumed that their attentions were a sort of tag team between them. Or perhaps he had become more aware of their observances because he was acutely aware of his own intense concentration upon the Norn witch, Katla Freyan.

She was sitting now, at the edge of gathered chairs. Snape considered for a moment who would befriend her, the staff were not unfriendly by any means, but close friendships were not a part of the life in Hogwarts. Working relationships tied to a common goal held everyone together, and the shared history that some held between them filled in the emptier spaces where casual friendship would grow in any other place of employ. Hogwarts was not employment but family. A family of elderly relatives who meant you well.

He wanted to look across the room to where she sat. He wanted to stare at her openly and sink into a kind of mesmerized stupor brought on by her movements, her expirations. He found himself wishing he could answer the thoughtful questions he believed he saw in her eyes. But he could not bring himself to approach her; instead he waited like parched earth for the mention of her name to rain upon him. He had even caught himself obliquely eavesdropping upon students if they were discussing her or her classroom.

He watched her from the corners of his dark eyes, unable to control this heedfulness. She was no longer veiled and had begun wearing staff robes, but of a sky blue and with the contrast of her blonde braid she still projected her homeland to his eyes. She turned her head slightly and her gaze slid to the window. A great longing seemed to pass over her features and he knew without question that she wanted to be outside. He let his own gaze follow hers to the glass and saw the rain rivuleting down its surface, the gray sky, just the tops of the forest. When he looked back to her, he saw how a triangle of pale flesh had been revealed down the length of her slim neck with the turn of her head, saw the delicate ear, the tendons taut under her skin, the small pulsation of a vein and he had to swallow deeply and look away.

With a sudden rush of possessiveness he was pleased that Quirrell had taken this year off, to go where? He found he did not care anymore. The younger man was gone, his slender, good-looking face and his thin elegantly-boned body were not here to step between Snape and this woman. His view of her was unobstructed.

The scraping of chairs indicated that the meeting had drawn to a close and he realized with a start that he had lost whole minutes of time, entire conversations and discussions had become a drone of sound that held no meaning and now they had faded away. He watched as Katla stood and stooped to pick up some brightly colored bag from off the floor at her feet, she looked over at him and smiled as she moved toward the door. She disappeared into the hallway.

Like being trapped in a recurring dream, he found himself alone in the staff room with the librarians. He decided to leave quickly and let their stares fall uselessly upon his back. He moved out of the grouping the three of them had formed upon rising. With too much purpose. They would not allow it.

“Professor Snape,” both called softly in unison.

He stopped and bent his head slightly, watching them. He turned and faced them, then sighed in a bored voice, “The eat-me drink-me sisters.”

Their beautiful faces faltered, but slowly broke into sly smiles, slipped like secret love notes to him.

One giggled and he decided he despised her for her stupidity. He raised a brow and closed an eye as he looked at her, searching for the clue that would tell her from the other. He wanted to compartmentalize them, recognize the stupid from the bright, label them and be done. He watched her blush under the heavy gaze of his inspection.

“You most obviously desire others to be flummoxed by a complete inability to identify either one of you individually.” He stated this simply, but with an undercurrent of dismissal.

“Perhaps our distinguishing marks are best revealed in other circumstances,” the other one now and Snape knew that she was the brighter of the two. He swiveled his head and caught her look, saw the challenge. She was moving this past veiled innuendo.

“Inelegant,” he said simply and her face closed immediately. Peripherally he saw the other look sharply at her sister.

He would not break his gaze from her angry eyes. He held fast and watched as she stoked the fire of her fury, at his implication. Finally he spoke, “I would advise you not to allow your misguided emotions to burn so fiercely. You will not find an answering blaze in this quarter. Yours will be doused. All this,” he hesitated, “passion drowned within a frozen sea.”

Her mouth fell open.

“Ladies,” he clipped out and was gone.

~***~

 _He could smell snow. The promise of it was unmistakably carried on the chill wind biting at his naked haunches. He could not curl any tighter into himself. But the wings. He could wrap himself in the wings. With a great heaving effort between his shoulders he brought the huge wings down around the sides of his body, he felt them scrape heavily against the icy dirt. He wanted to raise his body up, draw them over his arms, around his torso, but he was still prostrated. She was coming for him. He should not stand, he should not move. He must wait still. She would help him to his feet. He felt the thick, arching edge of the wings press against his head then slide between him and the earth and he was warmed. He slept in grey feathers._

~***~

 _He was standing on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. The night was black with indistinct grey shadows smeared across his vision; a crescent moon hung waning above him and the stars were hazy and dim. It was Summer Solstice. The trees compelled, opening their arms of branches and promising an ancient embrace. He was afraid. Not of the trees, not of the impenetrable darkness of the night, but of something within the woods. Something had called him and brought him to the very edge. He wanted to turn and look over his shoulder and be reassured by seeing the outline of Hogwarts against the inky vault of Heaven. But he could not turn; he must move forward, something was calling to him. Some thing. He dug his heels into the earth and he listened. He heard His Master’s silent voice call his name. He turned to look over his shoulder. Hogwarts was in ruins. He was running through the halls, he was a first year and his robes twisted around his legs, bunched between his knees because he was running through the halls of the school. He tripped in the tangle of robes and sprawled along the cold flagstones. He pressed his ear pressed against the floor and listened and heard the voice again. But this time it was not calling to him. This time the voice was demanding his life._

Snape’s eyes snapped open and the darkness of his bedchambers blinded him. His heart felt gouged and poured heated gouts of blood into his veins. He could not see and he thrust his face up into the dark space. His head was wrapped in black velvet, soft and alluring but suffocating. His eyes longed for any glimmer of light, any greying in the black, a shape, a silhouette, something upon which to focus. He was the woken corpse in its fabric-lined coffin.

He rolled over and relished the feel of his body moving. His hand scuttled along the top of the bedside table and his fingers closed around his wand. Lumos. Several thick candles sprung to an orange life, illuminating the room, defining the edges with flickering shadows.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat, panting, on the edge and considered the dream. He played it out in the theatre of his mind, observing each image and letting each emotion spill like acid into his lungs. It had been a dream of emotions, not images and he wondered at this new shift in his dream world. He had always dreamt like a man seated before a fortune teller with symbols flipped over onto the table of his mind, tarot cards being lined up on a silk cloth. But now he was dreaming in the thick sludge of feeling and he longed for the definition of images instead.

He stood, his bare feet recoiling at the cold numbing of the floor. He began to walk the length of his bedroom until he found its size constricting. The hair shirt and a loose pair of emerald green sleeping pants barely warmed him; his skin was growing clammy from the chilled air so he dressed for the day and walked out into his main living quarters. It would be an hour before dawn and then several hours before breakfast. He would have to speak with Dumbledore before he could eat, before his stomach could be soothed. He dropped heavily in a chair, incendioed a fire and sat vigil on his sickened heart.

It had been the same chair, same posture, same torment just three weeks before on the eve of Halloween. And he was here again, like a snake with a belly full of her own eggs, coiling coiling a warm nest out of the rotting leaves, he was calling old memories to him and wrapping himself around them like a leathery clutch.

He could not sleep but for dreaming he could not wake but for remembering.

He thought of the strangely compelling dream again. Voldemort was returning. It was his voice in the dream forest, his presence in the nightmarish Hogwarts. How would Dumbledore interpret the dream?

How many countless hours of discourse had he and the Headmaster spent between them these past nine years, he wondered grimly. And what did all the talking do, what did it amount to, what cryptic signs were uncovered? He did not know. He did not believe that the talking was anything more than the draining of the pus for him. How could Dumbledore act as repository for so much grief and regret? Snape knew that he could never be that container, not for himself, not for anyone else. And he was humbled by Dumbledore’s ability to hold all these things within him, like a vessel filled, but he would not overflow and spill his precious contents. He was a human pensieve.

He had never had someone like Dumbledore in his life before that morning on Hornbjarg. In school he had not considered the Headmaster at all; he was a figurehead, a force to be denied, to be worked around.

He smiled to himself at the irony that it was through Lord Voldemort’s eyes that he had finally come to see Albus Dumbledore as a force to be reckoned. A pure shaft of light. A silver electric bolt of lightning. The wizard’s powers were immense and watching the Dark Lord consumed by this knowledge brought a grudging respect for Albus Dumbeldore into Snape’s breast. Tom Riddle had been frightened by Dumbledore as a young man and yet as Voldemort he twisted his fear of the wizard into an effigy of a fool and hid behind mocking laughter. Snape saw through this and was frightened. He was frightened all the time as a Death Eater. It was an impossible side effect of taking the mark that he would never have predicted. And he despised himself for this fear and grew to despise his Dark Lord for instilling it.

He had followed the Headmaster back to Hogwarts that long ago morning and he remembered aching inside. They had apparated to a small place just outside the grounds of the school, the Scottish morning blanketed in white fog unlike the Icelandic silver sky and deep green sea. Dumbledore had looked at him in a piercing way, he was thinking of paths unfolding before him, of paths behind him flowing like blood away from his feet. And the old wizard nodded and began to walk purposely towards the castle. Snape followed. Was this then the path? Was this following a choice or was he being drawn like the obsequious moth to the death lamp?

They had sat in Dumbledore’s office for hours in silence. Snape watched the man before him place his elbows upon the massive desk and drop his head down into his hands. All the implications of the situation seemed to explode like a volatile potion before his eyes. In the curve of the Headmaster’s bony fingers Snape saw his failure, in the strands of snow white hair he saw his guilt, in the way the thumbs of the older wizard massaged his scalp Snape saw his anger. After a long time, Dumbledore looked up at him and began to speak and they spoke for the rest of that day and long into the night.

“Severus, you can speak of these past years. You can speak of this past week. I know that you are not used to speaking at length or freely, but I have found that doing so is testifying to the universe and when you put your story out to the universe great and terrible things happen. And it is these great and terrible things that make our lives worth the living.”

“I have no story, Headmaster. I have confessions. That is all. And I fear that I would sully the world by speaking of them.”

“You sully yourself by hiding them within you. These things you keep will become a personal Dementor and your soul will be sucked from within. You will create a vacuum.”

“I am the one who told Lord Voldemort we needed the pregnant witch.”

“The Buddhists believe that every action must be considered. We do not teach that in our world. Every action, every word, each breath, each thought.”

“I read about the Western gunslingers and how they notched the handles of their weapons. I have notched my own body for each death I am responsible for and the scars are keloids but they still bleed.”

“I am sorry.”

 

~***~

 

Dumbledore turned his face away from the Potions Master and looked out the window. “This is your first dream of Voldemort returned?”

Snape nodded.

 

~***~

 

He had returned to the Headmaster’s rooms at tea time. A lunchtime scrap of parchment had requested that he do so, and he couldn’t help but smile at the unwritten concern he read in the spidery script. Although the dream had faded away, it had ripped a small tear in the fabric of his thoughts. Snape knew that even Dumbledore could not stitch up this hole in his psyche. Voldemort was indeed returning and there was much more at stake than a rend in Severus Snape’s mind.

So, he went to tea. His long and purposeful strides carrying him to Dumbledore’s office, his long and lean face closed in thought. Minerva was there and he marveled at how open her features were and peripherally he saw Dumbledore drop a cube of sugar into her teacup and he wondered at this casual knowledge.

“Ah, Severus.” Dumbledore looked up and said his name like he was receiving a gift.

“Severus,” Minerva clipped out lightly. She poured him his tea and handed him the frailly thin china cup and saucer. He took it and settled into the chair beside her. The three of them were gathered together by the hearth, a fire chuckling warmly there, a tea-table completing their small circle of wing backed chairs.

Snape let his thoughts float carelessly upon the smooth waters of their conversations. They discussed students, and holidays, and a particularly troublesome portrait in the Ravenclaw common room. They sparred about Quidditch and pondered the weather. And then Minerva turned to Snape and asked him, “How are you finding our new History of Magic instructor, Severus? Have you sat in on any of her classes? Have you spoken with her?”

And Snape felt caught out by this and studied the older woman under lowered brows. “I have not really found her to be any more different or any more similar to the rest of the staff.”

Minerva inclined her head and sipped her tea.

“I had not considered sitting in on one of her classes. That might, indeed, prove to be intriguing.”

Dumbledore spoke, “She does not find that an annoyance or intrusive, Severus. You could sit any one of her classes at any time. She is a phenomenally gifted instructor.”

“I think I might do that, then.” Snape said slowly as if considering a request. Minerva was still studying him closely and he addressed her directly. “I have not had as much opportunity to speak freely with Instructor Freyan as I would have hoped. But she has only been here at Hogwarts going on three weeks now.”

Minerva brought her cup down to her lap, “She is a fascinating creature. I could speak with her for hours, but, truthfully, she intimidates me more than I care to admit.” She smiled and Dumbledore laughed aloud.

Snape concurred, “Yes. And not even to consider what she is but to look very long into her eyes is difficult. They are really unique in their coloring, are they not? And she seems quite,” he paused, searching for a word, “probing.”

Minerva’s tea cup crashed to the floor and shattered. “Oh, dear. I am sorry about that.” She was flustered and bent to the broken pieces but Dumbledore muttered something low and the cup was whole again. The older witch picked it up, turned it carefully in her hands and looked over at Snape, “You, you have seen her eyes?”

Snape stared at her, his thoughts streamed into a waterfall of adrenalin that cascaded down through his sinuses and into his mouth.

“You have seen her face, Severus?” Dumbledore asked.

Snape’s blood cooled to ice and his guts froze. He narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips into a thin, jagged line. He felt his hands tremor and pushed one hard against his thigh, the other taloned through the delicate handle of the teacup.

“What do you mean?” he looked from Minerva to the Headmaster, who was studying him over the rims of his spectacles, and back to the aged witch with her open face.

Minerva spoke slowly as if to a child, “She is veiled, Severus.”

~***~

Snape knew that the world was a place of mystery and magic. He was born with the knowledge that this was so; it had flown through his veins while he lay sleeping in the infected womb of his mother, he had drunk deeply of it while she fed him the tainted milk of her own breasts. And as he grew he suffered under the brutalizing agonies of those creatures injured by it. Through blood, bone and book he learned that the world could be a terrible and dark battleground upon which illumination and shadows warred.

To him existence often felt like moving through a dream and that dream could shift into a nightmare or dissolve into an ecstasy. Snape knew this was a true thing, and yet he was dumbfounded as to how to explain why it was not openly discussed, why his fellow travelers did not pay it acknowledgement and he began to wonder if those who existed in the ecstatic dream did not question the world in the ways that those who scrabbled under the nightmares did. And this thought caused his breast to be filled with jealousy and envy and anger. His experience was not the experience of others.

He sat in the chair before the grate, again for hours, and considered the conversation with Dumbledore and McGonangall. Why was he seeing the Norn Witch’s face? Why weren’t others?

Tomorrow he would go to her. He would watch her teach, watch her speak. He had no doubt that what lay between them was a sea of mystery and magic. He would listen. And he would look. And he would consider the waves.

 

~***~

 

Breakfast was very nearly over. Snape and the librarians were the only staff left, seated at opposing ends of the Head Table. He had had no choice but to nod cursorily at them, before sitting down late to the meal.

He was soothed by the predictability of his eggs, coffee and two thick, toasted pieces of molasses bread, and ate quickly.

A small, lone group of students were clustered at the far end of the Ravenclaw table, their breakfast plates and bowls being arranged and rearranged in individual and group processes. He could hear them arguing the feasibility of life on other planets, completely engrossed in one another and the explanatory tableaus they were maneuvering on the table. He refrained from rolling his eyes, Ravenclaws.

He finished his meal and sat with his long forearms flat on the table, thinking. He held his last cup of coffee of the day and he wanted to bring it up to his face and smell deeply of it before drinking it down, instead he shuffled it on the table top between his open palms and considered which class he would visit of the Norn Witch. He knew the class scheduling by heart. It was a constant within the walls of the school and had not changed once in the nine years he had been teaching there. Nor had it been any different when he was a student. It was as though the school was part of an established mathematical theorem and it always, unwaveringly, represented x.

A sudden giggling from the other end of the table froze his hands and curdled his thoughts. He resisted the urge to drum his fingers in a show of utter exasperation. Again the giggling and the sound seemed to be feeding directly into his brain. He pursed his lips. The incessant attention of the two women was beginning to unhinge him. He smirked thinking that if he were the hedonistic creature they so obviously took him for, he would have been comatose by now under their ministrations.

He let his gaze drift to the Ravenclaw students; none appeared to be aware of his small drama.

He turned his head, the subtle swivel of a raptor, and looked down the table to where the twins sat. Both were looking at him. A laden bowl of fruit was before them, and each held a piece in their hands. A gorgeous, ruby red apple was cupped in one long-fingered hand, and Snape could not look away as the twin licked tentatively at the skin of it, watching him from under lowered lashes. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth and bit into it. She held a bite of the white flesh between her teeth, closed her lips over it and swallowed. Snape breathed in deeply through his nose.

The other twin began peeling a banana and as she bent her head over the erect fruit, opened her mouth and wrapped her lips around it, Snape felt his body betray him. His solar plexus seemed to implode, and the librarian looked up at him with just a movement of her eyes. Heat spilled into his belly. Slowly the woman pulled back; keeping her shuttered gaze firmly locked to his, and circled the wet tip of the fruit with her tongue before covering it with her mouth once more. He could not look away. He watched as she worked her teeth into the succulence of the pulp, then popped her lips from off the end and appeared to actually bestow it an open-mouthed kiss. Snape’s eyes widened as she tipped the banana towards him, revealing how she had shaped it into a glistening phallus with her teeth. He instantly became erect. He looked from the fruit to her face and she brought it back up to her mouth to run her pursed lips down its curved edge. His cock became a heavy pendulous weight. She shut her eyes, languorously put half the thing into her mouth and bit through.

He could not move. His fingers clenched and unclenched around his coffee cup. He ground his teeth together and brought his eyelids to slits, the unfathomably black irises reflecting darkly from behind his thick lashes. He inclined his head to both women. They stood and with a swish of hips and sliding shoulders they left the Great Hall, arms around one another’s thin waists. One looked back at him; he was still gazing upon their retreating figures. She caught his eye and winked.

Under the table Snape pressed the heel of his palm hard against his erection, closed his eyes and wondered, is this desire?

 

~***~

 

He could not remember the last time he had been in Binn’s classroom; surely it must have been the last day of his own History of Magic class as a student. He doubted if the way it looked and smelled now had anything to do with Professor Binns. The room was bathed in a soft, glowing light and Snape looked to the huge casement windows that ran nearly from ceiling to floor and saw the swathes of silk that curtained them, filtering the gloomy Scottish light and transforming it into the atmosphere of dreams. The air hung heavy with the scent of cinnamon and wood smoke. She was heating the room with the fireplace.

He had slipped in quietly before the class began and now stood at the back, watching the sixth years move in relaxed groups to tables, and chairs and even the floor. He had never seen the students so at ease in a classroom. The room was filled with the low hush of their laughter and gentle murmurings to one another. The children sat and Snape watched in amazement as all of them produced hand-crafted bags and pulled yarn and needles and handwork out and began arranging the wool in their laps.

Then Katla entered and the students stood and greeted her with familiarity and respect and Snape found he was strangely envious. These sixth year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were certainly never disrespectful to him or in his potions classroom, but they had never stood upon his entrance. She bowed her head in greeting and they sat again and began knitting.

The Norn Witch stood at the front of the classroom and as she watched her students she slowly brought her gaze to rest on him and he wondered how it was that to the others she appeared veiled. He looked at the sharp, Nordic planes of her face, the light pink of her lips, the incredible blue eyes and the white-blonde hair that fell down her back bound in its thick braid. Her eyes widened slightly upon seeing him there, then she smiled broadly and yet there seemed to Snape to be something shy in her face. He nearly smiled back at her but nodded instead and she held his gaze for a long time before she looked away.

“Let us continue discussing the wizards who were known as The Brothers Grimm. We were talking of how their stories, their tales, were used as a means of hiding olde world magic. Who said that if you want to hide something the best place is oftentimes right out in the open? I believe that the Grimm brothers would agree with that.”

A hand was raised, “Yes, Miss Cavanaugh?”

“Instructor Freyan, I was wondering if you believe that the Grimm fairytales are still applicable today, for the wizards and witches of today, or if the form no longer speaks to the modern mind.”

Freyan nodded at the girl. “That is an excellent question, actually. Now, why would you think that the form no longer speaks to the modern mind?”

The girl spoke slowly, considering, “One example I was thinking of primarily was the wolf in the fairytale representing evil. I don’t think that the modern mind necessarily equates the wolf with evil incarnate and thus the fairytale does not translate properly.”

“Werewolves!” a Hufflepuff boy exclaimed. “Werewolves are evil!” Snape startled at this and found himself nodding.

He watched Freyan narrow her eyes in thought and look at the boy. “Are they really, though? Can a curse alone make one evil?”

The boy blushed furiously and shrugged.

“And we are not talking of werewolves, but wolves. A wolf that stalks and devours whole. And Miss Cavanaugh would posit that the wolf no longer frightens the modern mind and therefore is no longer capable of conveying the message intended by the Brothers Grimm. Why would that be?”

A muggle-born witch who Snape had never heard utter a word in six years raised her hand. “Because we no longer fear the dark and what lurks in the dark? We have lit up the world artificially and we fear the darkness in men’s hearts?”

“Are we saying that muggle-borns and non-magical folk no longer understand fairytales as they were intended? And do we include the modern day witches and wizards in that category as well? Certainly, the world has changed these past two hundred years.”

Freyan was walking amongst the groups and she would stop and take a student’s knitting up in her hands, adjust something and hand it back, or stoop down and point out a mistake, or bend slightly and place an encouraging hand on a shoulder. All the while she maintained the lesson and Snape stood enthralled.

“How many here would say that they fear a wolf? How many here have walked through a forest at night lit only by the light of the moon?”

Again the muggle-born raised her hand and Freyan motioned to her with an elegant wave of her hand, “This isn’t about wolves, Instructor Freyan, but I bet that a lot of witches and wizards don’t know that most muggles don’t understand the way the moon waxes and wanes. They just don’t know that much about it.”

Freyan nodded at this, “Do the rest of you understand what Miss Brava is saying? Most muggles, unbelievably, have not been taught the lunar phases.”

Students looked at one another in wide-eyed amazement and shook their heads. Freyan continued, “Who knows the small rhyme about the moon a muggle poet wrote for children?”

No one answered, Snape shifted his weight uncomfortably from one leg to another. He knew. He knew the poem and it ran through his mind like water.

“No one?” Freyan asked again.

He could stand it no longer, “If I may, Instructor Freyan?” She turned to him, a smile playing along her lips, surfacing in the depths of her eyes.

He spoke the poem and his deep-timbered voice echoed warmly off the walls,

"0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east;  
Shine, be increased:  
0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west;  
Wane, be at rest."

She smiled, pulling a corner of her lower lip under her top teeth and ducked her head. “Yes, that’s it. Christina Rosetti. Thank you, Professor Snape.”

He bowed his head to her and felt his heart throw itself against the cage of his ribs. This, then, was desire.

~***~

The teacher’s lounge was filling up quickly. Snape was determined to avoid the librarians this week. His determination might even be helped by the twins themselves, he thought, as he looked around and did not see them. There were kettles and teacups set out on a table. He took up a cup, splashed milk into the bottom, poured a cupful of oolong and moved to the outermost edge of chairs. He sat down too quickly for his choice to look casual, but still no sign of the two young women.

Then the door swung open again and they appeared. He closed his eyes tightly and concentrated on creating a sense of isolation around himself.

After a few moments, he opened his eyes. He was being left alone. He took a long, satisfying pull at the cup of tea. As the warm liquid swirled around in his mouth and trailed hotly down past his solar plexus, his brain compared this warmth with the warmth he had been feeling in the dreams.

The dreams were beginning to unnerve him and he found his thoughts wandering back to that morning’s particular haunting. The female creature was getting closer to him, he could feel it. Today, for the first time, he had carried the feeling of anticipation out of the dream and into his morning. And every time he turned his head he saw himself naked and winged from out the corners of his inner eyes, felt the scratch of the feathers, the softness of the down along the phalanges of the two wings. He pushed the images away and took another gulp of the hot liquid, nicely stoking the fire already blazing on his insides. At that moment, the door opened and Katla entered the lounge.

He watched her fill a large glass with water.

As if he had called her name, she looked over at him suddenly, smiled, and then came to sit in the chair on his left. She placed a woven bag of the most mesmerizing colors down on the floor between them, the glass of water next to it, and pulled a knitting project of deep black wool out from the bag. She settled into the chair and began to examine her handiwork.

“And how are you today, Severus?” she asked him quietly, still sorting out the knitting.

“What is with this insufferable knitting?” he scowled.

She looked up at him, a smile tugging at her lips, “Insufferable knitting?” She began to click her needles together and he saw that she was working effortlessly while keeping her eyes focused on his. “Why is it insufferable?”

“I don’t know why it is insufferable, it just is! I have never seen anyone at Hogwarts knit before you arrived. As of late, students, teachers, even the bloody house-elves are knitting.”

“I’m pleased to hear that you’ve actually noticed that this olde world skill has been brought into our modern times. It is truly a handicraft worthy of study. I know it to be thousands of years old for a reason, and surely, even a hardened wizard like you can see that this is a craft.” She smiled at him, “However…you don’t seem to be one of the vast numbers of those wishing to acquire it.”

“I do not knit, madam.” As he watched, she stopped the clicking of her needles, laying them in her lap she used both her hands to spread out the work that was already completed. He felt himself drawn to it and reached out to touch it. “What is this?” he asked as he fingered the knitted work. It was warm and dark and he could detect the musky smell of lanolin in its coarse wool. For one fleeting moment he wanted to pull it to his face and feel it against his skin. He moved his hand quickly back to his own lap.

“It is going to be a gift.” She looked up at him. His gaze left hers and followed a strand of the black wool down to the bag on the floor. “And it is a koan,” she said softly.

He was still staring at the knitted work, his mind untangling the sheer simplicity of it, seeing how the yarn wove around itself and around the needles, the knots were really not permanent, they were a temporary system of holding the yarn into a design, a form. Her hands, smooth and nearly ivory white, elegant in their design worked the needles, the knitted work growing from their movements.

“Do you know what a koan is, Severus?” she asked him, her voice dropping even lower in volume.

“A koan?” He looked up from her hands and into her eyes, they really were astonishing in their crystal blueness, for the first time he realized that her gaze was so unsettling because of the black ring that circled each iris, that darkness holding in such pale light. She was looking at him intently and strangely he felt himself relax under her scrutiny. She nodded at his question, urging him on with her silence. “Am I to gather that a Norn Witch is discussing Zen Buddhism with an alchemist?” he said, and realized that his voice sounded gentle and teasing. She smiled and ducked her chin in and looked back down at her work. “Yes, Katla, I know what a koan is.”

“Mmm,” she murmured softly. “Good.”

“Dare I even ask” he paused and she looked back up at him, “how a piece of knitting is a koan?”

She considered this, and he felt that she was also considering continuing their conversation. He exhaled and she spoke, “It is like a koan to me, in that, while I knit my mind wanders a path which is not of my conscious choosing, and along that path lay the pieces of a story.”

“You unravel a story your subconscious tells you while you ravel together the yarn.” She smiled widely at his words, nodding. He stared at her, realizing that she was pleased with him, his words. “’The blade is so sharp it cuts things together not apart,’” he nearly whispered this.

“Yes,” she said loudly enough for several teachers to turn and look at them there.

The black eyes grew even darker as their owner’s brows lowered menacingly, coolly looking back at the other professors, the intended result of averted eyes cheering him. He resisted the urge to scowl at the librarians who did not look away. He leaned closer to the witch by his side and relaxed the tense muscles in his forehead.

“I am not certain, that technically, your experience while knitting would constitute a koan, but I do see what you are intimating. It is a meditation for you, then?”

“No, not a meditation. It is a path I take towards my own enlightenment; meditation is too emptying of an experience. Knitting keeps me moving down my mental pathways, towards something, filling me. The koan is in the finished product, you see? It is a study for me. Unlike others, I don’t set out to make any one object – the finished piece is unknown to me in the beginning.” She paused and then looked at him, pursing her lips, hesitating. “I am making something, not from nothing, of course, but making something that was not there before. I am creating it.”

“That is hardly believable.” He sat back rigidly, shut one eye and looked at her with his practiced face of skepticism. “That would be the same as me saying that I do not have a finished potion in mind when I begin preparations, but by the time I have finished brewing I have an acceptable result. Yes, yes, we transform, the raw material becomes more. More than its parts, in some cases, but not through a desire for them to become such, but from the physical properties of transformation. Oh, I suppose, as the muggles so tastelessly put it, that a hundred monkeys working for a hundred years would produce something of value, but I do not think that you are comparing this conscious act to an unconscious mathematical accident.”

She looked at him and he saw a range of emotions cross over her face, hurt, frustration, a spark of humour and then a firm set to her features which marked mystery to him. “Monkeys?” She shook her head, then leaned in very close to him, “How, then, Severus, do you explain love? How it is made?”

Dumbledore cleared his throat and the room quieted instantly.

Snape shifted in his chair, he was being heated from the inside out, he felt as though Katla had breathed her words about making love into his face and he had inhaled that exhalation into, not his lungs, but his mind, his limbs, his loins. He felt a terrible frustration, not in body, but in spirit. He felt he would scream out loud at not being able to continue the conversation, and the scream turned in his guts and hurt him. He believed that he had injured her and he regretted it immensely. He wanted to make amends, to encourage her on with her observations. He wanted to listen as her gentle voice with its Northern lilt spun out images inside his head. He wanted to take her by the hand and lead her out into a day of sunshine and warmth and lay down with her in the long grasses of a hidden meadow. He wanted her in his arms.

Another staff meeting drifted away from him. Beside him Katla worked her knitting needles and he could only stare down at his hands balled into fierce fists in his lap. It was over and she stood quickly, stuffing the material back into the bag and moving away from him with purpose and intent. He wanted to jump to his feet, but rose slowly. She was out the door, he followed her.

In the hallway he looked both ways and glimpsed the witch turning a far corner. He was surprised to find that he was actually running after her.

“Katla.” She either couldn’t hear him or chose not to. Her steps were purposeful. “Instructor Freyan!” he barked out at her. She stopped and turned towards him with a look of surprise on her face. Two first years had frozen at the sound of his voice some ways ahead. He dismissed them with an impatient wave of his hand.

He caught up to her and found himself at a complete lack of words.

After a long moment, she broke his awkward silence, “Yes, Severus?”

“I fear that I offended you.” She kept her gaze on his face, steady, encouraging something else from him. He scowled. “Right before the meeting.”

Again, she looked at him without speaking. He felt, not foolish, but out of his element. “When I suggested that your interpretation of a koan was inaccurate. When I dismissed your statement that you have no idea what your knitting will become.”

“Mmm. Yes, I see.” She studied her feet. “You are a very exacting man, Severus. I’m not used to that. I forget my place at times, assume much more than I should, and in the case of, well, you and I, our personalities are at such odds that I am often left wondering what I have done to offend you.”

“You have not yet offended me, vizkr.”

“I talk too much, it is a flaw,” she held her hand up as he opened his lips to speak. “I would speak at great length if given the slightest bit of encouragement. I am not a logical thinker, like yourself, things are not black and white for me, nor are they grey, I see things in a vast assortment of colors and shapes and symbols. I have felt…” here she hesitated, “that during the few times you and I have found ourselves in conversation, that I am not making myself clear on any level. That, in fact, I am making things much more confusing than they actually are inside my head.”

“Then I am the one at blame, for not allowing you the time or breadth you need to clarify your position.”

“Severus,” she said. “I, well, I have something for you, and yet…” She looked up at him. “I suppose that I ought to just give it to you, then.”

“What is it?” he asked impatiently, his words tinged with what sounded like fear to him.

She dug deep into the bag of knitting and pulled out something, holding it close to her for a moment, studying his face. Then she thrust it at him, he could only respond by taking the balled up object from her, not looking down at it, keeping his gaze on hers.

“I just finished this, and I know that it is meant to be yours.” She turned and walked quickly away from him.

He stared after her, watching as she turned a far corner and was gone. He then shook out the item in his hands so that it fell into shape, holding it up at arms-length. It was a tunic, of the deepest blackest wool, not one bit of light reflecting off it. Slowly he turned it back-side front and there, knitted as part of the garment, in a grey yarn, were two very distinct representations of wings.

~***~

 _Raining, raining, raining, a grey pelting of sharp edged blades of water, falling, falling, falling upon him. The sky painted silver, the hidden sun vainglorious in its ignorance of absence. He was naked, but for the golden haired doublet, crouching at the edge of the lake, his thin haunches flexing beneath the weight of his body as he was pounded down into the cold mush of sodden earth by the torrent, the bank of the lake giving way under his trembling feet. Scrabbling in the slurry of mud and rock and torn bits of grass, he fell to his belly, arms reaching out for some hold, something to grab, to grasp, to pull himself up and away from the frothing edge. The lake was boiling, a cauldron of angry waves. There was nothing to bear him up, nothing within an arm’s length of rescue, he breathed out and gave himself over and was swallowed beneath the roiling black surface. Battered by the water, thrown against the stony bottom, pulled without effort along the firm floor of the lake, the witch’s hair shirt began to disintegrate. Shreds of it hung flayed from his torso, his skin white as bone beneath its golden fleece. His hands reached out to hold onto it, pressing it back against himself, as the water tore at it, at him, flinging him, upwards, shooting him out from its depths and as his limbs sprawled outwards, his back arching, his body bowed, spread-eagled, the shirt fell away. Tumbled in the deluge, he watched it became a thousand single strands of hair, torn, loosened, freed. With an inhuman scream that became an inarticulate moan, he pulled himself into a ball, somersaulting through the storm, and the great wings exploded from his back, unfurled and beat the sodden air, lifting him up up up…above…into the clear blue empyrean._

~***~

The dream woke him. He was still fully dressed, prostrate on top of the bed clothes, the chill air of the room acting as coverlet. He wanted to curl into himself and he wanted to unfold outwards from his core. He turned onto his back, stretched himself to a painful length, his toes pushing away from the ends of his feet and the top of his head straining from his neck. He flexed his shoulder blades hard towards his spine.

He could feel her pulling him towards her, the moon and its tides.

So he lay upon his bed, one forearm heavily crossed over his eyes which would not close, the knitted jumper clutched in his other hand and held tightly against his cramping belly. His head swam, filled with a liquid longing that could not be reduced to a solid, could not be boiled off to a gas. It felt as though it were his very lifeblood loosed from his veins, no longer circulating in smooth ropes of purpose. He fought the desire to rock himself in rhythm to his thoughts, memories, his emotions rising and falling within.

He could not remember how dry he had once felt, he tried, as one tentatively toes the edge over which falls a great and trembling height. And yet he knew. He remembered the fact of it, the way that he knew the facts of other things; asphodel in an infusion of wormwood was the Draught of the Living Death, Jobberknoll feathers could make the staunchest liar scream the truth, a bezoar was antidote for most poisons. He knew he had been the corpse left swinging on the gibbet. He could not deny this terrible truth about himself and now he could not remember the feeling of it. That knowledge of shriveled rot was no longer part of his existence. The hollowness had been filled.

The nagging doubt of it all had continued to drift upon the surface of his churning thoughts. The question about what had he been filled with, who had done the filling and was it a permanent condition, temporary or likened to his beloved potions making, was it an alchemical step? In the process of his own life. He did not know enough about himself and ultimately realized that he knew nothing of the interior world of others to feel comfortable in assessing this altering of his existence.

But he knew he was done turning in the dry wind blown by others.

It was the earliest morning hour, just past solar midnight; he listened to the lunate whispering which seemed to be for his ears only. He left his cool and dark dungeon keep and went in search of her warm light.

~***~

She was walking slowly towards him, down the moonlit hallway of the ground floor. He ascended, pondering the ethereal idea of voices and feelings and urges supernatural. As he mounted the last stair step and saw her there, his heart leapt up and he nearly cried out, not from a startled surprise but from the inevitableness of her appearance. He swallowed the sound and waited for her to draw closer to him. And he felt veridicality, the elusive truth which peeled back the very skin from off his bones and declared that being fully awake could be so much more than dreaming.

She was smiling at him, of this he was certain. She was looking up at him; he inclined his head, “Vitka.”

She laughed, “Ah, Severus, it was vizkr yesterday, was it not?”

He nodded slightly, “I believe I now understand the implications of your wisdom. Although I am struggling to place it into the perspective of my smaller life.”

She looked away from him and in the murky morning light, her profile, the bared edge of her neck, the feminine shoulder bent towards him, all washed through his being with an aching that felt nearly infantile, immersed in a need to be held by her and rocked in her arms. His eyes burned with the emotionalism of it and he willed them to be dry.

“Severus, you do not need to struggle any longer. Your understanding is accurate. My journey here has been to take the hair shirt from you.”

She reached out one thirsty hand and he took it in his own. His palms were sweating and yet her skin drank deeply, imbibing in the very oils of his body. She extended her other hand and he lifted his trembling hand to hers. She brought his fingers to her mouth, pulling him into her heat slowly and with purpose. She held his calloused fingertips against her closed mouth and the shaking of his hand became an uncontrollable surging, an electric current inside his veins, coursing down his arm, up and over his shoulders, spreading out across his back. A fault line of tremulous emotions cleaved him open, splitting him in half, ribs gaping wide. His very self, all that he was, began to avalanche into this chasm. He closed his eyes.

He had given himself over to her completely. And she led him through the hallways of the building that had become the edges of his life, maneuvering the stairs he climbed up and down several times a day but now each step a first, into the darkened corridor which led to the privacy he wrapped around his thoughts like the heaviest Winter cloak. She opened the door.

And behind them she closed it.

She became his eidolon, a portent wraith signaling a death but also a rebirth. He marveled as she moved herself inside of his body, fitted her small, feminine form into the flayed ribcage, cradling his wildly beating heart as though it were a fledgling bird tottering on the edge of its hatchling nest. Pushing up against his spine, stretching her arms down inside his own arms like gloves. She brought his hands down now, away from her hidden face and wrapped their conjoined arms around her body. He grasped her fiercely, pressing heavily on her flaring hip bones, positioning her inside his own pelvis.

They began to fall, together, backwards, his spine exploded outwards, his femurs cracked and crumbled, his skull melted, ice warmed to water which she caught between her palms and splashed the liquid of his dripping self upon her face, droplets beading diamonds on her porcelain skin and he lay his open mouth there, suckling a cheekbone, drawing the essence of himself back down into his own dissolving throat and finally, finally, finally, she moved beneath him and his mouth was on hers and the dissolution of love washed him away.

~***~

He threw himself with a fierce but haphazard intent into the wakened dream. A state of complete abstraction shared. It was his and it was hers and between them it grew as though it were another life, another entity created out of the chimerac space that separated them. It was a place in which only they could enter, borne of two bodies, two destinies, the secret cope amongst the roots of an ancient tree where two travelers lay waylaid on their separate journeys.

And he lay down with her, the first woman he had ever known, and she lifted him above the dank and dreary memories of his past, lifted him above the suffocating stagnation of his present and lifted him into a clear vista that her silent lips promised was his future.

In her arms he slept, dreaming only of her.

The last morning in July, he awoke.


End file.
